This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac offer a stark look at the plausible worst-case scenario for a climate breakdown over just the next thirty years. And Zarah Sultana argues that in the UK (as elsewhere), we need to demand transformative politics to respond
Continue readingTag: Andrew Nikiforuk
Accidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Andrew Leach and Martin Olszynski go into detail about the calculations around the Teck Frontier mine – and particularly how any pricing assumptions which could make development viable are far out of date. – Kate Yoder points out how the fossil fuel industry
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Fiona Harvey writes about the perfect storm of environmental crises leaving us at risk of societal collapse. And Tim Flannery calls out the deception and denial from Australia’s government after it has contributed to setting its own country ablaze. – Mark Olalde
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Justin Nobel exposes the toxic – and even radioactive – side effects of the oil and gas industry. Reuters reports on the widespread presence of permanently-dangerous chemicals in drinking water in cities across the U.S. The Canadian Press reports on charges against an
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes about the dangers of measuring economic and social progress solely in terms of GDP: It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong with the way we assess economic performance and social progress. Even worse, our metrics frequently give the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – George Monbiot makes the case for popular sovereignty mechanisms to supplement systems of representative government which fail to reflect the will of the people. And Ian Bremmer reports on Chile’s mass protest seeking a public voice to end economic unfairness. – Katrina
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Grace Blakeley discusses how the financialization of the economy has enriched a few at the expense of everybody else. And Blakeley and Harry Quilter-Pinner point out how social care in particular is suffering for having been turned into a profit centre. – David
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Jerry Taylor writes that any reasonable evaluation of the risks associated with a climate breakdown demands that we transition away from carbon pollution as quickly as possible. Aria Bendix points out that multiple major U.S. cities stand to become uninhabitable over the next
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alex Hemingway points out that British Columbia has a long way to go in raising readily-available revenue in order to provide even the essentials of life for its residents. And Toby Sanger examines the foreseeable distribution of Jason Kenney’s tax slashing scheme –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Frank Graves and Michael Valpy discuss the contrast between Canadian voters who are rightly concerned about the gap in wealth and power between the rich and the rest of us, and the Lib and Con politicians who go out of their way to
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Avi Lewis contrasts the real crises which demand our attention against the manufactured ones which are instead promoted by far too many of our political leaders: Even for those of us who have not yet experienced personal loss and trauma from climate catastrophe,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If other Canadians don’t think Alberta should go suck a lemon, they probably soon will
Alberta! Go suck a lemon! I don’t endorse that sentiment, of course. I’m an Albertan, after all. The person who did say something like that, as it happens, didn’t say it about Alberta. It was a long, long time ago, 1976 as a matter of fact, when Catherine Ford said
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Andrea Germanos discusses the problems with relying on the charity of the uber-wealthy rather than stable and sustainable public revenues to meet the needs of the people with the least. – Dan Fumano reports on the City of Vancouver’s call for a shift
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Author Andrew Nikiforuk tells a bleak tale of squandered opportunities, wilful blindness on energy policy
By adopting an energy policy founded on low royalties and pipeline development, the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley squandered an opportunity to implement a program that could have strengthened Alberta’s economy while preparing it to deal with the inevitable decline in fossil fuel demand, author Andrew Nikiforuk told the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Eric Levitz discusses the glaring gap between Americans’ policy preferences, and the outcomes from a political system which falls far short of representing most people in the face of the influence of the ultra-rich. And Matthew Yglesias comments on the hack gap
Continue readingAlberta Politics: If F. W. de Klerk’s apartheid comparison to the fossil fuel economy is OK, why is David Suzuki’s slavery analogy an outrage?
A speech in Calgary last week by the last white president of South Africa in which F. W. de Klerk suggested the challenges faced by Alberta in the waning days of the petroleum industry may not be dissimilar from those facing his country in the last days of apartheid seems
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Lambert Strether points out that standard estimates of income inequality (jarring though they are to begin with) tend to ignore the capital gains which accrue disproportionately to those who already have the most. – Scott Alexander makes the case for a basic income
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Michal Kalecki discusses how full employment shifts the balance of power from corporations to workers. Roland Kupers reminds us that inequality is a matter of policy choices – and that there’s broad public support to reduce the level we’re stuck with at
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alex Himelfarb warns about the dangers of participating in Donald Trump’s race to the bottom for public revenues – and the importance of highlighting the value of collective funding for social priorities: Sure, our tax revenues as a share of the overall economy
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Robert Costanza reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s The Value of Everything, and highlights its focus on attaching proper importance to priorities that aren’t reflected in prices: (T)he current mainstream ‘marginalist’ concept bases value on market exchanges: price, as revealed by the interaction of supply and
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